Daily Digest – March 21: The Farmer’s Almanac of Financial Regulation

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick responds to critics who think it’s an exaggeration for him to call the current era the Age of Greed by presenting a devastating collection of evidence: the morning business headlines from the Wall Street Journal.

David Dayen explains how Wall Street wound up routing all its shadiest bits of business through the House Agriculture Committee, which most people probably wouldn’t expect to have the power to gut Dodd-Frank’s derivatives regulations. (Spoiler: It just did.)

Imara Jones writes that if you’re not at the top of the economic ladder, above the altitude of little problems like wage stagnation, racial discrimination, or the complete breakdown of our governing institutions, recent news doesn’t offer much cause for celebration.

What the looming debt ceiling fight (yes, another one) tells us (WaPo)

Jamelle Bouie notes that with the deadline for raising the debt limit approaching, House Republicans want entitlement cuts in exchange for their cooperation. They’ll also want a helicopter fueled up and ready to go once the hostages are released unharmed.

Pat Garofalo writes that George Osborne, Paul Ryan’s counterpart in the U.K.’s Tory government, has presented another austerity budget to help put the “blight” back in Old Blighty. Plan B is to ask if they can maybe do the Olympics there again next year.

Women in Healthcare Suffer Abuse Inside and Outside the Home (The Nation)

NND Editor Bryce Covert writes that while women are dominating the growing domestic work and health care industries, workers in those fields also tend to suffer high rates of physical and emotional abuse and injury. Who nurses the nurses back to health?

Sophie Quinton writes that low-cost retailers like Trader Joe’s and Costco have found that paying their workers well results in increased profits, since customers have a better shopping experience when store employees aren’t stone-faced and grunting.

Mike Elk reports that Eric Cantor’s grand plan to redefine the GOP as the party of jobs with his “Make Life Work” agenda got off to a great start as a bill to mush all federal jobs training programs into an undifferentiated lump barely cleared the House.